


White Flowers

by akisawana



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Fall of Beacon (RWBY), Families of Choice, M/M, Missing Scene, background bumbly, not my fault canon did it, schnee sisters being awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-29 09:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19017010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/pseuds/akisawana
Summary: Yang is the maid of honor at her uncle's wedding





	White Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Note the first: the original draft started with Ironwood bursting in to yell "GET IN LOSER WE'RE GETTING MARRIED."
> 
> Note the second: you guys remember when we were talking about the difference between "no archive warnings apply" and "fluff?" 
> 
> Note the last: Kath threw gloves at me, I had to throw back.

Yang is dozing, drifting in the unfamiliar clouds of high-quality narcotics when the bed dips next to her. She cracks one eye, sees the familiar worn corner of her uncle’s shirt, closes it again. “Ruby’s safe,” he says. “Knocked herself out, but she’ll be okay when she wakes up.”

Yang nods. Wonders why Qrow’s with her and not Ruby. Decides it probably doesn’t matter. Opens her eyes again. He’s turning something silver over and over in his hands, and she can’t tell what it is, but he looks sad. More sad than usual, which is saying something for Qrow. She reaches out with her hand and puts on his knee, The silver...whatever disappears, and he puts his hand on top of hers.

When it gets really bad, her uncle always shows up. Like he’s got a sixth sense for when she really needs him. And he finds a way to fix it, because that’s what he _does_ , and that’s why he keeps leaving, taking missions in Mistral, in Vacuo, in Mantle. He never says it but her dad showed her once, huntsman rankings and her uncle at the top, taking the missions nobody else can. Always coming back to her, because he promised. Knelt down and looked her in the eye every time when she was small with his hands on both her shoulders. Only before the big ones when she got taller. Trusting her to take care of Tai and Ruby when he’s gone to wherever the biggest mess is.

She wonders if he’s here at Beacon because he’s their uncle or because this is the biggest mess.

His hand is warm and dry on hers. Qrow doesn’t say anything, lost in his own thoughts or thinking she’s back asleep. She’s okay with that, she’s floating on a bubble and if he said anything, touched her hair, it would pop and send her sinking back into all the things she can’t face just yet. She heard once, a long time ago, that your hand was one percent of your skin, and that’s about all she can manage right now. One percent. It’s enough for him. She’s always enough for him. They do not move for a long time.

Until General James Ironwood, headmaster of Atlas, comes bursting between the curtains and says to her uncle, “We need to get married. Right now.”

Yang not only opens her eyes for that, she sits up. Blinks when Qrow doesn’t argue, when all he says is, “Not now, Jim.”

“Is there something you forgot to tell me?” Yang asks him. Both of them, really. She didn’t know Qrow knew Ironwood, much less that they apparently were the kind of friends that made ridiculous jokes at questionable times.

Qrow looks at her, shrugs a little helplessly, but the panic raising his eyebrows is tricked-by-Ruby panic, not incoming-Ursa panic, so she’ll worry about it later. Especially when he says, his eyes still on her face, “Tai’s not here. Ruby’s still _unconscious_. Yang’s,” He stops when he says her name, and she’s glad for it. Qrow’s good at plenty of things but _words_ isn’t one of them.

Ironwood is half metal as far as she can see, rips in his trousers, shirt completely gone, greatcoat hanging open. Half metal and very shiny, and she thinks that he’s not so bad off. His right hand is silver-grey and so gentle as he touches her shoulder with just the tips of his fingers. “Yang will be okay,” he says, half a question, not making her look at him.

Yang tucks those four words away for when she’s less fuzzy-headed. Will be, isn’t now but will be. “Don’t use me as an excuse,” she says. She’ll be okay, yeah, when Weiss shows up with coffee because Weiss always knows what they need and brings it to them. When Blake comes by with her new scar but safe from that guy who wanted to hurt her so badly. When Ruby wakes up. When Yang herself shines brightly as Ironwood does.

None of which Qrow can make happen, and her brain is too full of cotton to follow her own logic, but Qrow looked so sad before Ironwood burst in she wants to play along, keep him from going back to that grief. Ironwood smiles at her, and he’s very shiny and she thinks she would like to be like him someday. 

But Qrow shakes his head, sighs and mumbles something that might be a curse. Ironwood goes to one knee in front of him, and any other day this might seem strange but now in flickering fluorescents it seems just as right as anything else could be. Ironwood reaches out and takes Qrow’s hand in both of his (not the one on top of Yang’s, and later she’ll know it was very intentional, that Ironwood never wants to take her uncle away from her.) “Would you come to Atlas with me, if I asked you to?”

“James, _please_ ,” Qrow says in a voice she’s never heard -no, she has. It’s his voice when he has a mission in the morning and wants just ten minutes past bedtime with his nieces, it’s his let-the-girls-come-along voice times a thousand, it’s how he sounds when he’s asking Tai for something _important_.

Yang hadn’t known anyone else could make him sound like that. Could make him beg.

The general, who has two seats on the Atlas Council, who has an entire army at his command, who can punch a Beowolf to death, he turns her uncle’s hand over. The hand that has a flask in it more often than not, the hand that waves goodbye too much, the hand that hit the wall when he stopped teaching at Signal. Ironwood presses his lips to that palm, and Qrow’s other hand is suddenly tight around hers and Ironwood murmurs against Qrow’s skin, “The tower is _down_ , Qrow, I don’t want to take you away from your family. I won’t take you away from your family, but I need you to know…”

“Tower was up and you still didn’t call,” her uncle says, and he is bitter, bitter and Yang understands too much and not enough and Ironwood closes his eyes.

“I didn’t want to risk it, if your scroll was compromised,” he says, “I’m sorry,” he says, and he looks up at Qrow and Yang wants to turn away from his eyes shining with naked sorrow and love and fear. “I just want to give you something more.” He laces their fingers together. “ _I_ want more. I want to know you’ll come back to _me_.”

Qrow’s eyes widen like he’s been shot, like maybe he didn’t realize how selfish he was, and Yang is very tempted to roll her eyes, roll away the heavy significance of this moment. He curls over Ironwood, his hand looser on hers but not letting go, says something too quietly for her to hear, and then they’re kissing, Ironwood’s hand on Qrow’s jaw and Yang does have to look away from that. 

She’s seen it before, seen her mother’s fingers laid so delicately against her father’s face. Yang doesn’t know why Qrow didn’t tell her or if Tai knows, doesn’t know when this started or why or how, or what they fight about or _anything_. But she knows when they break apart, mere inches between them, just enough to breathe, that her uncle looks happy, pure and sweet and unshadowed. She’s never seen him look like that before.

“Bring Yang,” Ironwood breathes. “I’ll grab Winter. We’ll make it official.” He kisses Qrow again, quick and desperate. “I brought an army because you said you were scared. I made Glynda _angry_ on your word.”

Qrow chuffs a laugh at that. “I knew you’d do something,” he admits. “Even if you didn’t call me back.”

Yang thinks about that for a moment. Thinks about her uncle sending Ironwood a text, two words she’s never actually heard from his mouth. Thinks about long days of no response. Ironwood reaches up and hooks his arm around Qrow’s shoulders, his fingers brushing Yang’s arm. “Let me call you husband and I don’t care how long we’re apart, I don’t care what might happen, I’ll call you twice a day for the rest of our lives,” he says deep and strong and clear.

“Easy to promise that when it might be two weeks,” Qrow says, but he’s got one hand on Yang’s and one hand fisted in Ironwood’s collar, and Yang’s not sure who he’s holding onto tighter. She knows he means it to be the same.

Ironwood stands, towering over both of them like a shield, like Yang wants to be. “I’d rather be your widow than your regret,” he says, and Yang shivers at the steel in his voice, feels an answering tremble in her uncle’s hand.

Qrow looks over at Yang and grins, and there’s a sparkle in his eye when he says, “What do you think, firecracker, do you have room for one more uncle?” and she doesn’t miss the sudden fear tightening Ironwood’s shoulders.

Maybe it’s all the good drugs they’ve given her, but she giggles at the idea she -that _anyone-_ could stop Qrow from doing whatever the hell he wants, even as she’s warmed by him asking. “If it’s this one,” she says, “I think he’ll be okay.”

They walk down the hallway with Qrow in the middle, hand in hand in hand. Maybe, Yang thinks, maybe one day she’ll do this with Blake, wander the halls looking for a priest or a judge or _someone_. Weiss will be there, leading the search, and Ruby arguing how best to tell Tai, and if Blake looks at her with half the tenderness and pride Ironwood looks at Qrow she’ll count herself a lucky woman.

Ironwood leaves them out in the hall when he goes to negotiate with Winter, and Qrow stops smiling, tucks a piece of hair behind Yang’s ear she didn’t realize was annoying her until it was gone. “How are you holding up, firecracker?” he asks.

Yang is _tired_. Yang wants to slump to the floor and sleep until her dad comes and carries her to bed. Yang is exhausted from the so-short walk and her heart is pounding in her chest from the effort. Yang will die before she misses this. Before she misses someone love Qrow without Raven’s shadow hovering over the two of them on black wings.

(For someone as tight-lipped as Qrow can be when interrogated, he sure doesn’t seem to care his voice _carries,_ especially when he’s by the open kitchen window and the girls are in the garden.)

So she gives him the best smile she can manage, the tightest hug she can manage. “Why didn’t you _tell us_ ,” she asks him. “We worried about you! I know why you didn’t say his name,” she waves off the obvious excuse, “Why didn’t you tell us you weren’t alone?”

All the times he disappeared and there were no matching reports of him saving the day on the other side of the world, all the times he walked away with guilt in his shoulders, and Yang thought he was down at the bar, worried about him sleeping on a park bench. How many times was he off with his boyfriend? She hopes it was every time. She has a feeling it wasn’t.

Tai and Ruby at least were always where she could see them. Qrow would answer her messages eventually, a day or two later, but he would be too far for her to help him, and he’d _never_ tell her if he was hurt or cold or hungry. Sometimes she felt like she was the mother and the two men were her children; did her mother have to remind them so much to drink water and eat vegetables and see the sun?

Maybe she’s crying a little, whatever, she’s allowed after this hellish day. “I’m sorry,” Qrow says, holding her like when she was a child and she knows it’s all going to be okay. It’s not right now, and it’s going to be a hell of a job, but Ironwood said it true. It will be okay. Ironwood said too, he wasn’t going to take Qrow away from his family. And as much as she frets over him, Qrow’s always been there to help her set everything right when she needs him. It’s going to be all right in the end. “I’m sorry, Yang,” he says again, and Yang needs to lean on him for this part.

“No more secrets,” she says into his chest. “No more lies.” She can’t have him playing the big kid now, she needs him to be like he was when she was little and couldn’t do anything and he made everything better. 

But he doesn’t have the chance to answer (to lie to her) before Yang feels a third hand on her back, small and ice-cold and familiar, and she breaks from her uncle’s arms to see Weiss.

It’s okay. He’ll be there when she needs him. When she comes back.

Weiss must have found herself coffee somewhere; she looks alert and pulled together. She looks sharp and cold as an ice dagger. She has never looked so beautiful. There is an expression on her face Yang does not recognize as she wipes the tears from Yang’s cheeks with fingers soft and chill as the winter’s breeze. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not all right,” Yang says in a wild spark of inspiration. “I’m all left.”

Weiss’ aggrieved sigh is such a wonderful sound. Weiss was so kind, so gentle earlier, waiting with her until Qrow came back with Ruby, until Yang wouldn’t be alone. It was _weird_. Weiss is not soft and sweet. Weiss is the stone Yang braces against, the fuel for her flame. And Weiss wasn’t really very good at consoling her, but she tried so hard. For Yang.

(What would have comforted her as it slowly sunk in that her arm was gone? Nothing, probably, but Weiss telling her she’s a hero, that Blake’s safe, came close as anything.)

Now Weiss is telling her that Port and Oobleck are alive, telling her about Coal and Katt who did better in the battle than the tournament, Sun and Neptune, Scarlet and Sage, team CFVY and Velvet’s secret case, and all the rest. Yang lets it wash over her like someone else’s class project. She and Ruby are hurt the worst among people they know, as far as Weiss could discover, but Pyrrha and Ozpin are still missing.

Weiss does not mention anything about civilians.

“And General Ironwood won’t be in too much trouble, I’m sure,” Weiss adds. “My dad will take care of him at least.”

There’s too much in that sentence for Yang to unpack, really. She remembers that as far as Weiss knows, she hasn’t seen Ironwood since...that morning? Was it just that morning? Why would Ironwood be in trouble? “He’s friends with my uncle,” Yang tells her. “Very very good friends.” She doesn’t want to think about that morning. She doesn’t want to think about this _day_. This week, in case she somehow messed up and Mercury was three days ago.

Weiss makes her trademark noise. “More than that I’d say, seeing as my sister is doing the. What did you call it? Shovel talk, I believe.”

Yang looks over and yep, Qrow’s backed against the wall looking slightly more panicked than he ever did in the courtyard, Winter is standing _very_ close to him, and Ironwood is facepalming.

“Good,” Weiss says softly. “He deserves someone. I can’t say I’d choose someone like your uncle myself, but...I can see it.”

Yang turns back at Weiss, and her face is the careful blank mask that means she’s concealing some strong emotion. Yang wonders how close Ironwood and Weiss’ father are, Ironwood and Weiss herself are.

Weiss touches Yang’s cheek one more time. “I’ll go find Blake and see if we can’t get her and you and Ruby in the same room, at least until we figure out what’s going on.” Yang nods and leans her head into Weiss’ palm for just a second, lets Weiss take the weight of the rest of the team. Weiss leaves and Yang turns just in time to see Winter release Qrow with a frankly terrifying pat on his scruffy cheek.

Qrow totally scurries to hide behind Yang. He may deny it later, try to play it cool, but she won’t let him. “Let’s just. Find Glynda,” Ironwood says. He sounds very tired, the kind of tired that most people sound like after about fifteen minutes of her uncle. He also sounds impossibly happy as he drops his metal hand from his face and meets Qrow’s eyes. “I don’t know if she can officiate,” he starts.

Qrow finishes the sentence for him. “But we don’t want to risk her wrath if she’s not invited.” Qrow grins back at him, reaches for Yang’s hand. His face falls when he realizes his mistake. Qrow’s got no poker face, never has.

But he puts his arm around her, tucks her firmly against his side, and asks her - _her_ , not Ironwood, “Are we doing this?” and waits for her nod before setting out.

“Dad’s not going to be happy he missed this,” Yang warns her uncle, and for some reason Qrow laughs.

“He did this to me once,” Qrow says, to a suddenly concerned Ironwood as much as to Yang. “Came home from a mission with a wife and no warning before. Turnabout’s fair play.”

Yang assumes Qrow’s talking about Mom, else Tai has a third disaster somewhere. Qrow was definitely there when her father married her mother. So was Yang, it’s one of her earliest memories. Wearing a white lace dress and a crown of yellow flowers, walking from her mother to where her father stands, where her uncle holds baby Ruby in his arms. She remembers tripping at the very end of the runner and basket goes flying, remembers her father catching it neat as if they planned it, remembers baby Ruby clapping.

Yang wonders what her father marrying Mom was like. Tai's never told her, parcels out stories about Mom in tiny bites. Never enough to satisfy her, to know about the woman who gave Yang her face and her eyes, who didn’t pass down her name. It probably wasn’t a proper wedding, if it was on a mission. But there would have been promises, spoken and ringed, because that’s what a wedding is. And flowers, because her dad loves flowers.

“There should be flowers,” Yang reminds them. Her uncle has more than enough rings to go around, but she’ll need flowers to hold.

“There should be,” Winter agrees from Ironwood’s other side. Yang’s only met her twice but she’s like her little sister, likes things to be done _right_. She’s like Yang herself, takes care of her family and doesn’t define it by last name. Weiss hasn’t said it outright but Yang hears it in the spaces between carefully-measured words how Winter took care of her when she was younger, as much as she could. Weiss never talks about their mother, not in the stories, not in the silences.

By the time they find Glynda, Winter’s disappeared and Yang herself is listing dangerously, wobbling like Ruby in high heels. The first thing Glynda does is wave up a seat for Yang, and once she’s sitting down Qrow pushes her head between her knees. The conversation is drowned out by the rush of her heart in her ears but her uncle’s hand stays in her hair, stroking gently. There’s still no pain, score a point for modern medicine, but that means she can’t tell if she’s pushed herself too far. How much blood did she leave back there? It didn’t seem like all that much, but she wasn’t paying too much attention. Sitting helps. Sitting helps a lot, and when Winter comes back Yang raises her head at the sound of her boots.

“Flowers,” Winter announces, thrusting at Yang a posy of white-petaled blossoms wrapped in blood-red leaves. She’s holding a matching one. They’re perfect, all things considered.

Yang takes them with a murmured thanks and stands, Winter’s hand on her elbow before she can think about swaying. Glynda is fussing over the General’s coat while Qrow keeps up a super unhelpful running commentary. Winter walks away once she’s sure Yang is steady on her feet, which handily gets her out of danger when Glynda sets cold eyes on Qrow’s hair.

Glynda has never scared Yang. Her uncle clearly has a very different opinion of the woman; he holds very still as Glynda rearranges his lapels and combs his bangs back with her fingers. Glynda’s hands are very gentle, and for all her uncle’s clowning he lets her do as she likes to him. There is a history there Yang does not know.

Then Glynda steps back and Qrow follows her, and Ironwood steps forward to take Qrow’s hand and Glynda begins.

One day, Yang will stand where Qrow is, hand in hand with Blake in front of all the people who matter. She’ll wait until Ruby is awake, and their dad will be there. But also Weiss and her new uncle, whoever Blake wants, Jaune and Pyrrha, Nora and and Ren. One day she’ll hold Blake’s hand in hers, promise to stand next to her, to share her joys and her sorrows, defeats and triumphs. One day she’ll slip a ring on Blake’s finger that will shine too brightly for Blake to ever forget what Yang promised, no matter how far they’re apart, no matter how dark and deep the shadows are.

Yang’s made her choices already, trusts Blake as Blake trusts her, gave her right arm to keep Blake safe (her father used to mutter that under his breath, _I’d give my right arm to have her back_ ) but she wants everyone to _see_ it and the law too, wants to make the vows and seal them with her mouth pressed against Blake’s.

What Ironwood asked for Yang wants most of all. She wants to know that Blake will come back to her, wants that promise heavy and cool on her finger. It’s selfish but she wants Blake to give back. Not in trade, no, she knows it doesn’t work like that. But is it so bad to want to know Blake will be there if Yang needs her?

“Yang,” Glynda says, and Yang shakes her head free from the future. Next to Winter’s, under Qrow’s, above Glynda’s and Ironwood’s is there too, she prints her name on the certificate slow and careful with her left hand. It looks pretty terrible, honestly, but it’s legible and she’s sure she’ll be forgiven. If anyone gives her trouble about it, she’ll repeat the story she's heard a million times, how Qrow somehow managed to set her mother and father’s certificate on _fire_.

“Thanks, firecracker.” Qrow holds the paper still for her, and after she puts down the pen, she flings her arms -her arm around his neck. “It had to be you that signed it,” he says into her hair, his apology for dragging her around. “You’re my only blood.”

Yang’s not really sure what that means. Oh, she knows that she’s the only one who shares any genes with him, but that’s never mattered in their house of three last names and she doesn’t see why it should matter now. Maybe she’ll ask him later, maybe she won’t remember, she doesn’t care beyond curiosity.

Instead of asking, she looks at Ironwood. He’s a good man, as far as she knows, and Glynda didn’t stop them and she trusts Glynda. So she takes Qrow’s hand and puts in in Ironwood’s. Ironwood’s hand is cool and broad and thick, steady and strong. It’s a good hand. Yang wouldn’t mind having one of her own. “Thank you for taking care of him,” she says, then turns to her uncle and channels her father’s most exasperated voice. “For the love of heaven, _try_ not to fuck this up.”

She doesn’t mean by drinking and picking fights and hiding in bars, because if Ironwood doesn’t get that he’s no good for her uncle anyways. She heard Ironwood say _I won’t ask you to leave your family_ and she heard Ironwood say _I want to know you’ll come back to me_ and she’s never seen her uncle happier than when Ironwood’s hands were on his face gentle as starlight. Yang fears Qrow will decide he needs to throw that away for some mission, like all the other times he’s held them for ten minutes past bedtime and disappeared before morning. She’s scared she and Ruby might _be_ that mission someday.

Heaven above and earth below, let someone in her family _keep_ something.

And then Yang leaves them, to go find Ruby and curl up as near to her as she can get, to find Blake and tell her what just happened. Tell her about the new black-striped ring of her uncle’s, tell her about the smile tucked in the corner of Ironwood’s mouth. Weiss finds her first.

Weiss is still blank-faced like she is often, too often for Yang to guess why. Weiss wedges herself insistently against Yang’s side and half-drags her towards where Ruby sleeps. The people in the hallway take no notice of them, too consumed by private joy or grief. Mostly grief.

The first empty room they come across Weiss ducks them into, props Yang against the wall with her ice-cold hands on Yang’s shoulders. “I couldn’t find Blake,” she says, words measured and slow, an entire story in the spaces between them. “She left,” Weiss says, the same way she says _difficult childhood_ , the same way she says _I’m sorry_.

Weiss allows Yang to slump over her, folds her arms around Yang as tight as she dares, and if she says anything it’s lost to the grey static in Yang’s ears, stretched from temple to temple across her face, clouding her vision. She does not know how long she stands there clinging to Weiss before there’s another arm around her waist and the familiar whiskey-wood scent of her uncle.

Yang’s become a little girl again, crying against Qrow’s chest. Not even he can fix this. He’s never been able to bring back what she’s lost.

The best he can do is sling her arm around his shoulders and half-carry her back to the bed next to Ruby, her new uncle on her other side, ready to catch her if she stumbles. When she stumbles. They tuck her into the bed like a small child after a nightmare, Schnee sisters taking up guard at the door. Qrow sits on the bed like he always does until she falls asleep, talking with Ironwood in a low voice.

And when next she wakes she could almost believe it was just a dream. After all, who would believe her uncle would marry _anyone_ , much less the headmaster of Atlas? And what happened next, that must have been a dream too.

Except Qrow’s hand is laid on Ruby’s cheek, the black and silver ring winking at her in the dawn light.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
